You're probably familiar with William Grant Still as a major figure in
the world of classical music and opera. Still, who grew up in Little
Rock, broke barrier after barrier in his career as an African-American
composer: first to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, first
to conduct a major orchestra himself, and first to have an opera
performed by a major opera company and, subsequently, on national
television. But did you know that Still had a female counterpart, a
childhood friend and contemporary who broke many of the same barriers
and also grew up in Little Rock? Neither did I, but thanks to the work
of James Greeson, music professor and documentarian at the University of
Arkansas and Karen Walwyn, professor and Steinway artist at Howard
University, the life and music of Florence B. Price are finally coming
into the light.

Florence Beatrice Smith was born in 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her
father was an inventor and a dentist with a thriving practice, and her
mother was a music teacher who was active in community affairs;
together, they encouraged their daughter's early interest in music.
Florence was something of a prodigy—she performed publicly for the first
time at the young age of four. After graduating in 1903 as
valedictorian from Little Rock's Capitol Hill School (one of two city
schools for African Americans at that time), she went on to study at the
prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston, earning degrees as an
organist and piano teacher in 1907. She returned to Arkansas and taught
music until 1910, at which point she moved to Atlanta to take over the
music department at Clark University.

In 1912, she returned to Arkansas again, to marry the lawyer Thomas
Price, with whom she had two daughters, as well as a son who died as an
infant. She set up a music studio from which she gave piano lessons, and
she also wrote and published piano pieces. But the Little Rock Florence
experienced upon her return was very different from the one she had
been born into 25 years earlier. Race relations had been souring
steadily since before the turn of the century, and Jim Crow laws had
cost her father the wealthy white patients and social standing he had
once enjoyed. Despite Florence's pedigree and credentials, she could not
gain acceptance into the state Music Teachers Association.

Things came to a head in 1927 when John Carter was lynched on the
corner of Broadway and West 9th Street—on the site of what is now the
Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, and near Thomas Price's law office. The
family moved to Chicago. There, though the marriage ended in divorce,
Florence fell in with a crowd of friends and colleagues who admired and
supported her. With encouragement, she began submitting her works to
competitions, and in 1932, her "Symphony No. 1 in E Minor" won first
prize from the Wanamaker Foundation, which attracted the attention of
the conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her symphony—the first
ever by an African-American woman composer to be performed by a major
American orchestra—premiered at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, just
two years after William Grant Still's "Afro-American Symphony" did in
Rochester, New York.

Over the course of her career, Florence Price published more than 300
compositions, but one in particular achieved a special resonance, thanks
to world-renowned contralto Marian Anderson, who deeply loved Price's
work. After the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Anderson the
opportunity to perform for an integrated audience at Washington D.C.'s
Constitution Hall, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (the latter of whom
resigned from the DAR over the matter) arranged for a concert on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Easter Sunday, 1939, Anderson sang for
75,000 live fans and hundreds of thousands more over the radio, and she
closed her performance with Price's "My Soul's Been Anchored in the
Lord."

In spite of her success and achievements, Florence Price has been all
but lost to history outside of the music world. She died in Chicago in
1953, much of her music lost. In 1964, an elementary school in that city
was renamed in her honor; it has since closed. But Price is finding her
place in history, both in Arkansas and elsewhere. In 2015, University
of Arkansas professor emeritus James Greeson released a documentary
entitled "The Caged Bird: The life and music of Florence B. Price," and
recordings of her works have surged in recent years. Not long ago, a
Chicago family who moved into Price's former home unearthed a trove of
compositions that had been lost for more than 30 years; they have been
edited by former University of Arkansas professor Dr. Barbara Jackson,
and now pianist and professor Karen Walwyn is raising funds to produce a
four-disc set of recordings.

Comment by email:Thanks again for sharing this with me William. I appreciate all the things you do for her and others like her. - Jim Greeson